Chapter Sixty-Four. Ingrid
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
INGRID
The Amenity Center buzzes like a disturbed beehive. Whispers are spreading fast. It started with Olivia, stumbling in with Emily’s arm clamped around her shoulders, her face blotched with tears. Mark pulling them into a side room, and then the sounds of muffled sobs.
The mothers still move through the motions—fussing with flowers, smoothing tablecloths—but there is a hum to the air. The collective instinct of a small town that knows trouble when they see it.
The flurry of snow outside has thickened to wool batting, the shift happening faster than anyone anticipated. A few parents press close to the doors, peering out into the blur. Someone murmurs, “We’ll never get home if it keeps up like this.”
Dad hovers, fussing over Mom, who keeps insisting she’s fine. I lean my shoulder into hers.
Then the doors open and Sheriff Ryan strides in, eddies of snow swirling after him, his white hair damp with sleet. Melanie is behind him, and forces the doors shut against the wind.
The hum of the room falters as the sheriff climbs the stage, looking every bit the lawman he’s been for forty years. His radio is clipped to his chest, static crackling faintly from it. “All right, folks. I’m going to need everyone to take a seat.”
Chairs scrape, and chatter dwindles to a hush. The room stills.
Sheriff Ryan clears his throat, scanning the rows like he’s studying faces. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to lay it out straight. Cat Dennis was found dead today in the model home.”
A ripple breaks through the room—gasps, sharp cries, hands pressed to mouths. A girl sobs out loud. Mark steps from the side room, pale and stricken, closing the door softly behind him.
Dead? The word is so small and solid, so final.
I feel it like a punch to the chest. It seems impossible—Cat dead—when we all just saw her alive.
But, of course, I should know better than anyone how easy it is for someone to be here one day and gone the next.
Pressed against my shoulder, I feel Mom trembling.
I reach over and pull her shawl more tightly around her.
From the crowd come overlapping questions:
“What do you mean, dead?”
“What happened?”
“How?”
The sheriff puts up a hand. “It’s too early for me to say, but I do have to ask that everyone keep clear of the model home. It’s a crime scene now.”
“A crime scene?” one mother says, grabbing a little girl who looks about seven and holding her close. “So she was murdered?”
Every phone in the room erupts at once, that awful government-issued screech cutting through the air. I dig mine from my back pocket: WINTER WEATHER EMERGENCY.
Chairs squeak as people start to stand, grab coats, grab children’s hands. “We’re going home,” one man says.
“Folks, folks,” Sheriff Ryan booms, both hands up.
“I need you to listen to me.” He doesn’t wait for them to sit back down.
“I’ve heard back from dispatch. An ambulance was on the way, but the bridge on 20 iced over.
The unit went sideways and had to turn back.
No vehicles are getting through. Not anytime soon. ”
The silence that follows is thick. Only the sounds of a toddler whimpering, his mother shushing comforting words, the hiss of the heating system struggling against the storm.
Sheriff Ryan lets the words settle before he adds, firm but steady: “The roads are closed. No one is coming in, which means no one is going out. You understand? We stay put. We stay safe. That’s the best thing we can do right now.”
For a heartbeat, no one moves. Then the voices rise again, layered and frantic:
“How long?”
“What if it gets worse?”
The pageant banners ripple as another gust rattles the glass doors. Outside, through the veil of snow, only the faint shapes of trees and half-built houses are visible. The sinking sun stains the clouds a seasick shade of yellow. Soon it will be dark. Soon it will be colder.
I can’t shake the chill in my spine, the image of Cat’s body in the model home, the creeping suspicion that her killer might be in this very room, with the storm closing in, and every one of us sealed inside.